Downtown Santa Fe gallery owner gets deferred sentence in obelisk destruction

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Downtown gallery proprietor Stephen Fox, accused of serving to to destroy the Plaza obelisk in October 2020, did not be a part of a so-called restorative justice deal the District Lawyer’s Workplace struck with seven different defendants, permitting them to keep away from jail time.

On Tuesday, nonetheless, he agreed to his personal plea cope with comparable penalties.

Below the phrases of his settlement with prosecutors, 74-year-old Fox pleaded no contest to tried felony destruction of property, a misdemeanor, and was given a deferred sentence of 364 days. He as a substitute will serve that point on unsupervised probation.

If Fox completes the probationary interval with out incident, the cost will likely be formally dismissed, his lawyer stated.

Fox additionally will likely be required to pay $2,842 to town of Santa Fe, which will likely be used for prices related to the Tradition, Historical past, Artwork, Reconciliation and Reality course of to deal with controversial monuments and statues all through town.

Chief Deputy District Lawyer Jennifer Padgett Macias advised state District Decide Sylvia LaMar throughout Fox’s plea and sentencing listening to Tuesday the state will dismiss two different different counts towards him — a felony conspiracy cost and petty misdemeanor cost of illegal meeting.

Requested by LaMar to elucidate why the plea deal was acceptable, “given the seriousness of the crimes,” Macias stated the counts set for dismissal doubtless would have been tossed if the case had gone to trial as a result of the state had no proof Fox had conspired with activists who spearheaded the toppling of the obelisk.

Macias additionally stated it appeared Fox had made a “rash and impulsive” determination, slightly than an intentional one, when he joined dozens of others at an Indigenous Peoples Day rally in tugging on the rope that introduced down what had been referred to as the Troopers Monument.

Fox had been photographed through the incident.

He was one in all eight individuals charged with destroying the monument. Two others confronted prices tied to a skirmish on the Plaza earlier than the obelisk was toppled. A kind of circumstances was dismissed. Seven of the remaining defendants agreed to the pre-prosecution diversion program, whereas the case of a defendant charged in June is pending.

Fox by no means denied serving to to destroy the monument — put in within the 1860s in honor of Civil Battle Union troopers however decried by many as a logo of racism on account of an inscription on one aspect that after referred to “savage Indians.”

“When one of many 40 or so activists handed me the rope, I gladly accepted, having been a Native American artwork supplier for the previous 40 years,” Fox wrote in a letter to town after he was charged. “After they pulled, I pulled and that was that.”

Fox has stated he believes Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber needed the obelisk torn down primarily based on statements the mayor made in June 2020. His protection lawyer, Tom Clark, revisited that angle Tuesday.

Clark stated Fox is an area fixture and a “fairly incredible” man with “strongly held beliefs concerning the world, about our place in it, concerning the techniques which can be supposed to control us and about the best way persons are alleged to deal with one another.”

“He is an excellent man, fairly frankly,” Clark advised the decide. “I would must argue this was an aberration of his character that he turned concerned in one thing that’s completely towards the issues he believes in. He follows the practices of [Mahatma] Gandhi and of Martin Luther King, of nonviolence, of passive civil resistance.”

Fox had “all the time felt strongly concerning the obelisk,” Clark stated, “and when the mayor indicated this obelisk was an affront and a shame to our Native American brothers and sisters and buddies, it was the impetuous to do what Mr. Fox now understands and is aware of was not the best way to go about this.”

Clark stated Fox’s plea took a while, partially as a result of he initially did not have an lawyer. He additionally needed to proceed fastidiously as a result of he was involved a felony report may maintain him from taking part in political actions, Clark stated.

The customarily loquacious Fox was subdued through the listening to.

When LaMar requested if he needed to deal with the court docket, Fox stated there was “nothing actually extra so as to add.”

District Lawyer Mary Carmack-Altwies wrote in an e-mail the conclusion of the case “will carry closure for a lot of and restitution to the Metropolis of Santa Fe and its group members.”

Defendants who agreed to take part within the pre-prosecution program are nonetheless working by way of the method, Carmack-Altwies wrote in a subsequent message.

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